Monthly Archives: November 2014

Greetings once again to all my loyal readers! Charles Kimball returns, to give you the latest news on my world history website. It has been a year since my last newsletter went out, and I did not have to leave Kentucky after all. I finally found work last April, twenty-five miles from home, and I am enjoying it so much that I hope to stay at this job until I am old enough to retire. For those who did not read my previous newsletters, I was a victim of the Great Recession, having been unemployed for thirty-two months in a forty-two-month period. And this was the second time I applied for a job at the place that hired me, showing that persistence pays off. When the interviewers asked me to put down in writing what I had been up to since my previous job ended, I called that essay "My Lost Years."

In the last newsletter I said I was devoting some of my free time to writing new history papers and updating the old ones. Now that I am working again, my gain is your loss, but still there are achievements on the website to report, so here goes.

======================================

The biggest and most recent announcement is that after four years, my journey south of the border is finished! In November 2010 I began writing a complete history of Latin America and the Caribbean; last week I completed and uploaded the final chapter in the series. Called "Contemporary Latin America," Chapter 6 covers events that happened between 1959 and 2014, so we are looking at the present-day era, both during and after the Cold War.

I have been working on Chapter 6 since last April, making it a seven-month job. It is not the longest history paper I have written, but it sure comes close! Not only was I covering thirty-four nations here (more than in the previous chapters), but I am also old enough to remember most of the current events mentioned, so I felt I had to say something about them. So you won’t overtax the server (or your Internet connection) when you visit the chapter, I divided it into seven parts before uploading it. Here are the topics covered, and links to the pages:

One More Overview The Roller Coaster Ride of Economics The Abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine The Pink Tide The Changing Role of the Church Getting Along and Meaning It The Drug Trade Environmental Challenges Cuba: The Revolution Continues Venezuela’s Democratic Interlude Brazil: The Death of the Middle Republic Weak Radicals and the Argentine Revolution Colombia: The National Front

Che! Democracy Breaks Down in Chile Peru: The Revolution from Above Mexico: The PRI Corporate State Meet the Duvaliers Honduras Goes From Military to Civilian Rule Ecuador: From Yellow Gold to Black Gold Tupamaros and Tyrants The Somoza Dynasty, Act Two

Paraguay: The Stronato Brazil: The Military Republic Bolivia: The Banzerato Red Star In the Caribbean The Perón Sequel and the "Dirty War" Panama: The Canal Becomes Truly Panamanian The Dominican Republic: The Balaguer Era The Guianas/Guyanas: South America’s Neglected Corner French Guiana Guyana Suriname

The Salvadoran Civil War Belize: A Nation Under Construction The Guatemalan Civil War The Southernmost War Among the Islands Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Dominica Grenada Jamaica St. Kitts & Nevis The Netherlands and French Antilles Colombia: Land of Drug Lords and Guerrillas The Pinochet Dictatorship Peru: The Disastrous 1980s

The Switzerland of Central America Nicaragua: The Contra War Ecuador After the Juntas Chasing Noriega Argentina’s New Democracy Hugo’s Night in the Museum Democracy Comes to Bolivia (at Last) Haiti: Beggar of the Americas Peru: The Fujimori Decade

Brazil: The New Republic Cuba’s "Special Period" Chileans Put Their Past Behind Them Colombia’s Fifty-Year War Uruguay Veers from the Right to the Left Daniel Ortega Returns Ecuador: Dollarization and a Lurch to the Left The Chavez Administration, Both Comedy and Tragedy

Argentina: The New Millennium Crisis, and the Kirchner Partnership Guatemala Since the Peace Accords Can Paraguay Kick the Dictator Habit? Honduras: The Zelaya Affair Peru in the Twenty-First Century Bolivia: The Evo Morales Era The Mexican Drug War Puerto Rico: The Future 51st State? Conclusion

In case you haven’t seen the previous chapters in this series, they are as follows:

Okay, so what else has gone up on The Xenophile Historian in the past year? During the first part of this year, before I got started on Chapter 6 of the Latin American history, I updated the Indian history series. This part of the website was badly in need of it; I wrote the first edition of those papers in 1988, rewrote them in 1991 and 1998, and only gave them minor, cosmetic changes for the next fifteen years.

All four chapters have new stuff. For Chapters 2 and 3 I mainly added new pictures, while Chapters 1 and 4 were completely rewritten. For Chapter 1 that meant adding new material to cover archaeological discoveries made since the 1970s. With Chapter 4 there are five new sections. India and Pakistan got new sections for events in the twenty-first century, and Bangladesh got its own section; previously I simply lumped Bangladesh with Pakistan, which made sense when most people were old enough to remember that Bangladesh used to be called East Pakistan. Finally, new sections were created for Bhutan and the Maldives, two countries I barely mentioned previously. Here are the topics covered in Chapter 4 now:

Chapter 4: Recent South Asian History

The Road to Independence India Under the Nehru Dynasty Is This the Indian Century? Pakistan: Between a Rock and a Hard Place Pakistan in the War on Terror Bangladesh: The Difficult Years Since Independence Nepal: An Ex-Kingdom In the Clouds Bhutan: A Real-Life Shangri-La? Sri Lanka: Paradise Lost–and Regained? Maldives: The Sunny Islands

Are you "Pinterested?" I have had an account with Pinterest, the famous picture-sharing website, for a couple of years, since I learned that pictures from The Xenophile Historian were being "re-pinned" there. You can see what readers of my history papers like on this page:

Anyway, in September I decided to share the rest of the history-related pictures I have posted, in order to attract more traffic. 929 "pins" have gone up so far, on eight different boards. You can check them out here:

Speaking of traffic, in March the website counter passed the 1,500,000 mark. It passed 1 million in the fall of 2009, meaning it took four and a half years to get the latest half million hits. Still, those visits are welcome no matter how long it takes.

For Chapter 2 of the Russian history series, I added a new section detailing the Russian conquest of Siberia in the seventeenth century.

Because my chapter on classical Greece, Chapter 2 of the European history, is one of the longer chapters on the site (though not as long as the latest Latin American chapter), I decided to subdivide it, this time into four parts. I also added a section on the early part of Alexander’s career, before he became great, so I called it "Alexander the Pretty-Good."

And finally, the website has a simpler URL. When I moved the website to its current server, fourteen years ago, I said it finally had an address that made some sense. Well, http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/ gives you some idea of what to expect, unlike http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/1591/ or any of the other URLs it had back in the 1990s. Still, I have to admit it was a challenge for anyone besides me to remember it, and when I wrote it down for the benefit of others, I felt a bit like Nebuchadnezzar at an autograph session! So I tried purchasing a domain name that matched my real name; those who know me in real life wouldn’t have much trouble remembering charleskimball.com, right? It turns out somebody in Japan had charleskimball.com already (Why? I don’t know!), and the .org and .net URLs were also taken, but not used.

Fortunately there isn’t as much demand for the newer suffixes (.cc, .biz, etc.), and charleskimball.info was available; thus, I went with that. After all, the purpose of the website is to share information. Now if you type http://www.charleskimball.info/ into your browser’s address field, The Xenophile Historian should come up. If it doesn’t work, don’t worry, I plan to keep http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com for the forseeable future, so you can always fall back on that. Try it:

Now what will I do? I mentioned in the past that every time I complete a paper, that’s one more document I will have to update eventually. Thus, several parts of the site require attention; the pages on China, Korea and Japan come to mind, because I haven’t done any major work on them since the 1990s. I also want to get started on a concise history of Central Asia; I have been promising myself I would do that since 1992, but for some reason other projects have kept getting in the way, and they always seemed to demand I give them priority. Well, maybe now is the time priority will go to the Eurasian heartland. Besides Central Asia, the only other region of the world I haven’t written a history for is the south Pacific–Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and all the little islands in-between. At some point I will have to write about them, in order to make good my claim to have chronicled the rise and fall of just about everybody.

Whatever comes next, I hope you will all come back to the website in the future and read about them. Now with the holiday season upon us, Happy Thanksgiving, Chag Sameach (for those who observe Hanukkah), Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

======================================

If you missed older issues of this newsletter and want to see them, they can be downloaded in a zip file from http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/download/index.html . And the links below go to topics I mentioned in previous issues, that are still valid. Please visit them, if you haven’t already:

You received this newsletter because you subscribed to my mailing list, provided by http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/ . It comes out once or twice a year, when there have been major changes to the website. I AM NOT in the spam business, so when you subscribed here, your address was not sent to any third parties. If for any reason you wish to unsubscribe, or would like to subscribe a new e-mail address, go to my homepage ( http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/ ), scroll down about four fifths of the way to the bottom, enter your address where it says "Enter your e-mail address to receive the site newsletter!" and hit the "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" button.

After four years of working on it, almost to the day, my series of history papers on Latin America and the Caribbean are finished! Chapter 6, covering events in that part of the world since 1959, was uploaded this morning. Because of its size, I divided it into seven parts, with the following subheadings:

One More Overview The Roller Coaster Ride of Economics The Abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine The Pink Tide The Changing Role of the Church Getting Along and Meaning It The Drug Trade Environmental Challenges Cuba: The Revolution Continues Venezuela’s Democratic Interlude Brazil: The Death of the Middle Republic Weak Radicals and the Argentine Revolution Colombia: The National Front

Che! Democracy Breaks Down in Chile Peru: The Revolution from Above Mexico: The PRI Corporate State Meet the Duvaliers Honduras Goes From Military to Civilian Rule Ecuador: From Yellow Gold to Black Gold Tupamaros and Tyrants The Somoza Dynasty, Act Two

Paraguay: The Stronato Brazil: The Military Republic Bolivia: The Banzerato Red Star In the Caribbean The Perón Sequel and the "Dirty War" Panama: The Canal Becomes Truly Panamanian The Dominican Republic: The Balaguer Era The Guianas/Guyanas: South America’s Neglected Corner French Guiana Guyana Suriname

The Salvadoran Civil War Belize: A Nation Under Construction The Guatemalan Civil War The Southernmost War Among the Islands Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Dominica Grenada Jamaica St. Kitts & Nevis The Netherlands and French Antilles Colombia: Land of Drug Lords and Guerrillas The Pinochet Dictatorship Peru: The Disastrous 1980s

The Switzerland of Central America Nicaragua: The Contra War Ecuador After the Juntas Chasing Noriega Argentina’s New Democracy Hugo’s Night in the Museum Democracy Comes to Bolivia (at Last) Haiti: Beggar of the Americas Peru: The Fujimori Decade

Brazil: The New Republic Cuba’s "Special Period" Chileans Put Their Past Behind Them Colombia’s Fifty-Year War Uruguay Veers from the Right to the Left Daniel Ortega Returns Ecuador: Dollarization and a Lurch to the Left The Chavez Administration, Both Comedy and Tragedy

Argentina: The New Millennium Crisis, and the Kirchner Partnership Guatemala Since the Peace Accords Can Paraguay Kick the Dictator Habit? Honduras: The Zelaya Affair Peru in the Twenty-First Century Bolivia: The Evo Morales Era The Mexican Drug War Puerto Rico: The Future 51st State? Conclusion

So what will I do next? First I will take a break from writing for a month or two. I haven’t made up my mind on what I will write next, except that there are two parts of the world I haven’t done a history for, Central Asia and the South Pacific, so chances are it will be one of them. The other option would be to update a history series I have already written, the way I rewrote my history of India last winter to bring it up to date. Stay tuned for my decision, and in the meantime, read the new chapter and enjoy!

A lot has been going on here since I last wrote, a couple of weeks ago. Since then I have been doing the HTML coding for the final chapter of my Latin American history project, and I estimate I am just past the halfway mark on that, so it should be up on The Xenophile Historian by mid-November. Nevertheless, I figured I should take a break from that to bring readers up to date on other events.

For Halloween, there were quite a few kids trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. However, plenty of rain and two cold fronts made it so cold and wet, that they wore raincoats or carried umbrellas over their costumes. When our parrot Brin-Brin heard them, he started growling, so Leive turned off the lights and pretended nobody was home.

Next, the first freeze of the season came a bit early. The temperature dropped to 32 degrees Saturday morning, and 27 this morning. Yesterday there were a few snowflakes, too. And the amount of leaves in the road is incredible; on our street it looks like the rainstorm knocked at least half the leaves off the surrounding trees.

The biggest news is that Leive’s half-brother, Joy Bendoy, came to visit (hence the title). Leive hasn’t seen him in at least thirty years; he wasn’t at our wedding, for instance. Like most of Leive’s family, he is a pastor in the Philippines, and was touring the United States on a fund-raising trip for his ministry, when Leive’s niece Rezia invited him here. He was here from October 22 to 26, and stayed with Gene and Rezia most of the time, but we had dinner with him in Leive’s favorite Chinese place on the 23rd, spoke for an hour at our church on the 25th, and finally spent the afternoon at our house on the 26th. Here’s a picture Rezia took of him, at the Lexington Convention Center.

And here is Joy with Leive in our basement:

Finally, last week my brother solved a mystery in the family that is almost 60 years old. While I knew my mother’s parents well, I never met my paternal grandparents. My father’s father died of tuberculosis back in 1940, while his mother remarried and disappeared in 1955; both events happened long before I was born. None of us ever heard from our grandmother again; I don’t think she even attended my parents’ wedding. Well, my brother has gotten good at finding genealogical records, and he obtained our grandmother’s (re)marriage certificate; it turns out they moved to Gulfport, Mississippi. There’s another surprise; I didn’t know I had any relatives in that state! Then following the assumption that they spent the rest of their lives there, he tracked down their obituaries and death certificates. It turns out the grandmother I never knew succumbed to lung cancer in 1968, and her husband passed away shortly after that, in 1969. Finally, to end the story, they are buried in unmarked graves, in a country cemetery just north of Biloxi. Well, you never know what you’ll find when you uncover your roots.